Author
Topic: OurMx History (Read 16684 times)

LongLostUser

It's sad to see you reacting the way you are, Ghostship. Once again you are judging someone as a threat and an enemy instead of a potential resource. Judging by your statement "we can only hope LongLostUser is not a prize prat and acts responsibly", it sounds like you've already made up your mind, and that you think only luck will save the network from further destruction. Why is that? And as I said I don't want you to know who I am but still you chose to go ahead to look up the details of my connection. Isn't that a bit childish?

I actually had an idea on how to fix things in the form of a patch which won't break compatibility with existing clients. But when I look at this stuff now I realize it's most likely a bit beyond what I can handle, sorry. But at least it was worth having a look, so I know what the information looks like and what I have to work with, rather than not knowing anything at all.

Eagle's code is a bit hard to follow compared to other code I have worked with, his coding style is a bit different and I have never worked with dlls that inject themselves into a program the way a patch does. So I doubt I can help anyone with a patch but maybe I can write something else that can be adopted in other projects.

A quick read through this thread shows you that even when people have the relevant skills to help the community they would rather not work on a community project out of fear of who knows why, whilst such situations continue to exist is it any real reason that things seem like they are taking forever, community means all of us not just a few folks that act as the safety net for the rest.

Toad, why not offer up some work of your own on any topic you like simply to inspire me and the others to work harder and faster, we too like to copy a great example

@ LongLostUser : Trust is earned not demanded, I am here simply because there is no one else willing to steer this ticking timebomb to a safe port, if you feel up to the job feel free to jump in

PS: all IP's are displayed to forum staff so looking you up wasnt really necessary, but it is a relevant point of interest to others that you choose to hide who you are and thus place a barrier to any trust bond forming from day one of your posting.

I have a re-worked copy of Eagle's patch that is formatted commented throughout and laid out easily enough to follow somewhere. I agree Eagle's style is hard to follow (but it works) but a dll patch is no different from a normal programme really once you have hijacked the right api calls you just add your code in before calling the real api's.

I have a re-worked copy of Eagle's patch that is formatted commented throughout and laid out easily enough to follow somewhere. I agree Eagle's style is hard to follow (but it works) but a dll patch is no different from a normal programme really once you have hijacked the right api calls you just add your code in before calling the real api's.

I'd rather not circulate a modified version of Eagle's patch publically, as I didn't get a copy through Eagle so not official. I would like to hear your ideas as I can add bits into the patch - I was looking to add the entire protection QS and Will have built into a new client, which could be done but is very time consuming and I never finished it.

Hmm I concur with your thoughts on this matter RebelMx, Stripes has many great ideas and is always the guy I turn to first when i want to toss something about so he knows the latest ideas from our side as well as many great ones of his own, well worth a chat for sure

Logged

LongLostUser

People don't come over here to complain and criticize just because they want to be jerks. They complain because they somehow disagree with your way of doing things. Even if TOAD's posts don't seem very constructive, I'm sure that what he really wants is to express some frustration over how things are organised, he's just not very good at doing so in a constructive manner. You should still try to grasp the essence of what he's saying and try to learn from it.

I often see you trying to divert any criticism by tossing it back at others by asking what they've come up with instead of responding to the criticism. But what you have to keep in mind is that you were the one who stepped up and promised you'd make this client, and therefore people are expecting you to do so. You've gotten everyone's attention. When things are taking so long and people are getting tired and impatient of waiting, they come here to express their disappointments, wondering if anything is happening at all. It's not expected that TOAD or anyone else complaining here will make a client. They never said they would, so I don't see any use of trying to draw away the attention from the matter by asking what others have come up with. I know it may seem unfair that you're being criticized while working on something you're not even paid to do, but you asked for this attention, and now you have it.

The other thing I see is that you generally respond in a rather sarcastic and rude way, and often reject good ideas from people who show some interest for the project, there's no need for that either, no matter how silly other people might be. It just doesn't look very professional, especially from someone trying to take the lead on operations on this network. You don't really have to respond by being rude, sarcastic or by drawing away attention the way you are if you're a good leader. That's what irrational people do when they've run out of good arguments.

Another thing I wish you'd realise is that over time you've become very bossy. You pretty much dictate what's right and what's wrong in every decision that's being made, and take the role of speaking on everyone's behalf. Even this thread shows this when you're trying to use your position to reject me as an enemy and a potential attacker. You've made a regime where nobody wants to disagree with you out of fear that you'll somehow reject them from the community. The reason I am using a proxy now is so that I express my real, honest opinions without disrupting the peace of the place. If you'd been more up for constructive debates it wouldn't have been necessary.

And I know that trust is earned. You did once earn my trust as you did many great things. For one you were one of the founders of this once successful website. It was launched at a time when the only other noteworthy alternative was vladd's forum which was riddled with misguiding information, scam banners, disappointed users, and admins with the habit of censoring information. When wmw launched, it sure as heck didn't take long before it became the community's main exchange of WinMX related information. It was an alternative which people were happy with, and I can clearly remember the main ideals of the website being honestly, openness and tolerance, ideals that you could be proud of. But really, when you look at it today, what's left of those ideals? Almost nothing. The only people left here are pretty much just you, your admins, and a bunch of disappointed users. It has dropped to the same level as the thing it was once there to replace. You did once have my trust, but you lost it.

I don't know if you are referring to me when you say that people with the relevant skills would rather not work on a community project, as I don't really feel I have those skills, but I will assume you're talking about me as I'm the only one who's mentioned any skills in this thread so far, but I could be wrong.

The reason I don't want to work on OurMX and would rather play around with some code myself is that I don't really think it is realistic to finish the project when it is based around RoboMX, and I will tell you why:

When you start a project on a scale like this, it is important to have thought of a nice architecture from the beginning which will be used to build the program you're trying to make. But when you start out with a different program, with a different architecture and try to use that as a starting point, you will run into lots of problems. It just means that any other code you add to it has to be written in a rather clunky way to make it work with the existing code, and the existing code needs to be tweaked to fit in extra stuff. It's not a good idea, and I don't think it is realistic to finish a project this way.

Imagine a project where you're going to expand an old historic wooden house into larger concrete block. To begin with, the shape of the roof is not right when you want to add the next floor, so the roof has to be redesigned before you can fit another floor. Then after you add that floor, you suddenly realise that the wooden pillars used aren't strong enough to support additional floors, as they are too thin and in the wrong material, so you have to make modifications or build extra pillars around it. Then once you've done that and add even additional floors you suddenly realise that the ground isn't stable enough to support the weight, and your project just comes to a halt because nobody can see a way to finish the project as planned. In the end you simply have to admit that it is a bad idea to preserve the house and use it as a starting point and that the house should have been demolished from the beginning.

In OurMX' situation, RoboMX is that wooden house, and OurMX is the concrete building you're trying to make. RoboMX not really fit for what you're trying to expand it into. Any extra bits you add will have to be "hacked on top" of what's already there and the end result won't be as good. For example if you look at the implementation of the chat server in OurMX, it is not really integrated with the rest of the program, and seems to just be "slapped on top" of the rest by starting it as a separate thread. For one it doesn't listen on the same port as the rest of the client does, and there's no trivial way to integrate it properly as you need a way to identify the type of connection you are receiving and have a way to direct it to the right portion of the program to handle that connection. You may argue that the chat server doesn't have to listen on the same port, and progress may have been made since the first beta demo you released, but the chat server is just an example. You also need to listen for incoming file transfers, incoming primaries, incoming secondaries, and you will have to combine the various response functions of a primary like chat listing, search results etc into the "same" primary so you don't have individual primary connections for each feature you want to add. And the list adds up. And that's just for listening ports, the next problem is synchronizing threads and making every part of the program interact with each other. This has to be thought of from the beginning, not added as an afterthought.

I'm not saying this to be destructive and negative, I'm just being open, honest and realistic with you. If you're going to have a replacement client, changes have to be made both to the client and to the politics surrounding it. There's a saying which goes "If you always do what you always did, then you always get what you always got", and as long as we're still going in the same tracks we're not going to see any changes to the situation.

That's why I'm suggesting that you try to think anew and come up with some drastic changes to how you've done things so far. For one, some more openness about the project and the protocol to regain trust from people.

So far from playing around with this I haven't really done much other than ripping my hairs out, until I realised that the encryption tables in the MCS source were wrong, and when I looked at eagle's source I found that he's made a function to create the tables that were wrong in the MCS source. So I'm finally able to encrypt and decrypt so I can start doing some ACTUAL work instead of reinventing the wheel by fixing things that have already been done before. I'm sure that with some more openness about the documentation of the protocol, people could have told me that, and I wouldn't have to mess around with the wrong encryption tables. You probably knew of this too.

I know not everyone comes here to be a jerk but it often falls to me to figure that out and if a new forum character charges at you with claims of all sorts I am mainly the one who's going to reply to them as tbh I have been here the longest now, that doesn't give me any special privilege mind you but I do have a semi-vested interest in ensuring the survival of the network and the ability of others to utilise it, that's where the slight protective blanket comes into play.

If I have become other than the person you remember you really do have to look in the mirror and at the other forum visitors, you came here like many before you stating amongst other things that I was hiding everything required for folks to do some work themselves, that's not remotely true, I pointed you immediately in the direction of the archive when it was clear what you required, help was freely given.

You hide behind a proxy and ask me and the rest of the community for trust, yet you give nothing to build trust on.

I mention this trust element as we do in fact have a developers only area on WMW that folks whom are developers or have a sensible interest in WPN related knowledge can gain further wpn info and detailed help, however.. none of the community developers feel the need to hide who they are nor care about what I say if they have an idea they want to push, I don't own or operate the wpn this site serves as a base for many but simply an outpost for others with their own sites, theres freedom for all to do as they wish, theres no monopoly on speech but there is always going to be a level of trolling that brings the whole forum into disrepute, this is the same the whole internet over, I have no monopoly on asking folks to play nicely and converse rather than take potshots at me or the staff here, we are volunteers and we have been for 10 years now, that I hope commands folks respect, not blind obedience but simply the acknowledgement that we care about this network and put it first in our minds, nothing more or less.

If folks come to discuss openly they are treated very well, if they come to accuse they are simply shooting themselves in the foot, we all win if folks discuss , converse and agree or disagree, the world does not collapes if we do not agree, theres no need to call names or talk of professionalism when its clear basic research on this forum wasn't even undertaken before your posts, I am happy to take you at face value but that value is not as much as it would be if you where as open to scrutiny as myself.

Can I suggest you take some time to find your focus and leave me to tend to what I have to, we all do want the same thing but some folks seem unable or unwilling to face the fact we here are short of skilled developers, good will only goes so far and limitations in this area are the single most important hurdle we face in this non trivial task.

As always if you want to run your own project be my guest, others are also working on their private projects successfully, if we are lucky you might spend a few moments joining them in the future.

You continue to confound me Toad, I thought you where coming back next year and here you are just a dozen days after your last post, its nice to be wanted eh

I always hoped telling the truth was never seen as an excuse but some folks have more time on their hands than they can handle and operate with a warped sense of morals, my apologies as always for not complying with such twisted standards.

glad to see nothing has changed no changes means we are a very stable network.no improvements is something we may wish to be different, but even there, there are no changes, lots of comments and little or no usable input so we could state even the pace of improvement is very stable.Me personal I fail to see why so many are complaining spending time on a project that in their eyes fails. Spend your time on in your eyes more prosperous projects and stop bothering us.

You continue to confound me Toad, I thought you where coming back next year and here you are just a dozen days after your last post, its nice to be wanted eh

I always hoped telling the truth was never seen as an excuse but some folks have more time on their hands than they can handle and operate with a warped sense of morals, my apologies as always for not complying with such twisted standards.